A MUCH needed update!

Sorry that it has been such a long time since I last updated the blog! Believe me, there has been a lot of work going on, which is why we haven't been able to update as often as we'd like to.
We've been spending every hour that we aren't working or sleeping at the house! We have so much to accomplish before we move into our home on Sunday April 29th!

So, here's what we've been doing:

We're still trying to pick a color for our den. I think that we finally settled on one and it's not pictured above  - it's a pale red color and I think it's going to highlight the fire place really nicely!

We started painting our bedroom. I outlined everything and then Rob painted with the roller. While he did that I washed all the trim. Can you tell which one of these windows I hadn't yet washed?

This room looks so nice right now. We painted all the trim (except for the base board) - it's definitely a room I can't wait to sleep in now!

Rob's Mom and Dad came over on Saturday and pulled out the carpet in our bedroom. It sounded like it was a lot of hard work! 

Here's our bedroom with the carpet gone and the walls painted. You can tell that the trim around the windows isn't white (yet). Doesn't the floor look nice - it's a beautiful oak but....

Unfortunately there is some pretty bad water damage under the window near the bathroom. It's so bad that the floor has tented up. We have to replace this bit somehow before we get the new carpets in. You could feel this bit under the old carpet. I thought it was a piece if cable....

Oh, and the bottle keeps our windows propped open!

We also pulled the carpet up in the hallway... We ordered the new carpet tonight from Home Depot. It should be ready to be installed in ten - 14 business days. Not sure if we'll already be living there at that stage....

Here's a short video of my sweet husband battling the carpet on the stairs. I'm so grateful for how hard he works at night, especially after working such long days at work!

My baby's work - I snapped this shot while he was taking the carpet and under felt out to the garage!

Last Tuesday evening my Dad decided to tackle the plumbing in the kitchen. The pipes didn't have any shut off valves on them and my Dad needed to change the configuration of the pipes for the new sink and dishwasher. We turned the main water off in the house but...

The water just kept on running and running. You can't solder a pipe when the water is continually running because the water cools the pipe and the solder won't melt and adhere. We couldn't understand why the water kept running

We tried to suck the water out using my Dad's shop vac. We ended up just sticking it onto the pipe for a number of minutes to see if we could get five minutes of no water so we could solder. At one point we took the vac away and the water was really pouring out! Eventually we found out that we have another valve on our hot water heater that we needed to turn off too. It helped a little bit... enough that we could get the job done!

On Saturday my Mom and Dad decided to tackle the plumbing in the bathroom too. It also didn't have any shut off valves... and we needed to get the bathroom cleared out so that my Dad could retile the room. Of course we had the same problem....

So we let the shop vac suck the pipes dry while we ate lunch out on the back deck. Eventually though, we ended up blowing the water out of the pipes instead of sucking and my Dad had enough time to complete the job! I don't know what we would do without him!

Here we all are outside taking a break and having something to drink together!

Once the toilet and vanity were out, we cut the new floor boards. We needed to put these down because we pulled all the flooring out, right down to the original floorboards to get the levels all the same in the house! Here is my husband screwing the new floor boards into the bathroom.

My Dad then tiled the bathroom with our new tiles! He did it so fast and then hung this tape on the door to remind us all not to walk into the bathroom until the glue dried!

Doesn't it look beautiful? At this point we still needed to change the color of the walls....

My Dad even changed our wall mounted air vent to a flush floor vent which I like so much more. I felt like it stuck out on the side there!!

So where did we relocate the toilet and the vanity while we worked.... to the den with the fireplace! You might have a hard time using that toilet though but at least you can look outside while you go!

Here it is (almost) all finished and back together! It looks so beautiful. We just need to finish up with some painters caulk, paint the ceiling and fix the door! I LOVE THIS ROOM! And we are SO thankful for my Dad, who worked tirelessly on this! He does beautiful work!

Meanwhile, in the hallway....

We continued to measure and cut the new floor boards for the hallway. We had to get the exact measurements for all the little nooks and crannys! I feel like I know the downstairs so well now!

We finished a good portion of the floor boards off. The whole hallway is done (including the closets). We just have the kitchen and laundry room left!

My Mom and I would measure out a board together and my Dad or Rob would cut it. Here we are sitting on the board to hold it for my Dad.

My Dad cut a new hole in the hallway so that we can have access to the crawl space again since we covered over the old doorway in the kitchen.

He had to custom make a frame for the door! It came out so nicely - he even painted the walls in the hallway for us after he finished dry walling around the new door and spackling everything! He is SO GOOD!

We bought some beautiful cherry hardwood t put down in the hallway. We're looking forward to getting it down but want to be careful about when we do it so that we don't run the risk of scratching and ruining it as we continue to work! I don't have a picture of it yet!

Rob's Dad worked really ahrd in the garden over the weekend. He pulled up a good portion of the ivy near the garage. He uncovered the whole fence and it looks like it is in pretty good shape! I am so grateful he did that.... I just look at all that ivy and feel overwhelmed by it all!

So you may be wondering where we've been putting all the trash that's come out of the house: the carpets, under felt, trim, drywall, kitchen cabinets, old flooring, etc, etc, etc. Well, wonder no more:

It's stacked into the garage! The old oven is in there somewhere too. My Dad managed to sell our flat top stove to someone for $100! We will be taking a day off to throw all this away... one truck load at a time. Dumpsters are just far too expensive!

I'm not sure if I posted this before but we ordered our cabinets two weeks ago. They will be delivered to our house on Friday April 27th! We bought our new light for our kitchen too! I'm sure we'll be installing all of that on Saturday April 28th. We'll be moving in on Sunday April 29th and on Monday the 30th we need to hand in our apartment key, and take delivery of our new appliances! We also went out and bought some in stock laminate flooring for our kitchen and laundry room. Its long enough that we don't need to have a seam anywhere. I'm so glad that the same flooring will run through the entirety of the two rooms!

Some things we're hoping to get done before this weekend:

Finish painting in the bedroom (just the base board)

Buy some 1/4" dry wall to re-dry wall the hallway.

Spackle and paint the den (Sherwin Williams is having a 40% off sale this weekend)

Pick a color for the dining room and kitchen

mask and paint the trim on the stairs

Paint the trim in the dining room and living room

Thanks for checking in! Until next time!

Love the Colby's!

Last week

Sorry that it's been so long since I last updated everyone!!!
Hopefully these pictures will bring you up to speed and explain what we've been doing for the past week!

We've turned our back deck into a work zone. All the trash from the kitchen has ended up on the back deck (and slowly makes its way to the garage). We also have been cutting dry wall, etc out there!

I have tiny purple flowers all over my backyard! It looks so pretty!

My Dad taught Rob how to use the circular saw so Rob has been cutting dry wall. My Dad uses a circular saw because it gives really nice clean cuts!

I love this video of Rob! Beware - it's pretty loud!

We have some crazy levels in the house. The kitchen floor is lower than the hallway floor.... the hallway floor is about 4-6 inches higher than any other floor in the house and we couldn't tell why. So last Tuesday night we decided to pull up the unsightly flower painted wood floors to see what was underneath. Here's what we found!    YUCK!!!

Bob helped pull a lot of the old wooden floor up using a crow bar....

The floor underneath was so ugly!!! I felt like I was outside!

Unfortunately, just pulling up that old wood didn't bring us back to level with the kitchen... so we had to keep pulling up old floors. That's right... floorS.... there were five levels in total: the wood floor, the stone patio, a sixties tile floor and then some plywood.

Here's a close up of the sixties floor! It was extremely slippery which is probably why they put the patio looking floor on top of it! My Dad literally slipped walking back in the front door!

 Finally back to the original floor boards! Now we had to go through the same process in the kitchen!

We went to Lumber Liquidators and bought some new hard wood floor for our hallway! It matches our staircase really well! I love it and can't wait until its installed. It all clips together so we'll be doing it ourselves! Here's a pic of the floor we chose!

I pulled the little tiles up in the bathroom because the levels were all crazy coming in and out of there too. There is a thin sheet of plywood down everywhere in the house. It;s really hard to pull up - it just splinters. It's been a real pain to get out. And there's still more to come!

We bought some new tiles on sale at Home Depot for this bathroom! I think it's going to look great when it's done!

Mean while in the kitchen:

My Dad started to dry wall over the walls that he had fixed and wired...

He cut out the old extractor fan using his angle grinder one night and has patched up the hole already! I'm so glad that thing is gone! It creeped me out for some reason!

More of Dad's dry-walling in the kitchen around our new opening! I love this part of the kitchen! 

Dad started moving the laundry room door... Unfortunately we found that a vent went up from the furnace to the bathroom upstairs (kids) so we have to re-route that! You can see it in the left of this picture...

Here's the wall now after Dad has dry walled it and moved the door. We still have to re-route the vent... Also note that the kitchen floor is still in there too! 

My Saturday Demolition Team! They worked so hard and they matched! They pulled the whole kitchen floor out, right down to the black vapor barrier right above the floor boards! It took a lot of work! My Dad kept saying that Rob had the red mist because he worked fast and furiously!

Here's a short video of them pulling up the easier part of the floor. 

Unfortunately the thin ply wood underneath just splintered away again!!! There were also a ton of nails and staples left over in the hallway and kitchen. I pulled the last of them out today.... my back hurts so badly but I'm glad its done!

We knew that there was some old termite damage in the house against the outside wall in the kitchen. The damage was not as bad as I expected at all. Just one section of 2 x 4's. Rob note the following note to the termites 'GO AWAY TERMITES. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME!'

 The previous owner had paid someone to come in and replace all the old eaten wood in the house which the guy did. We could see it.... The only problem was the guy got lazy towards the end and stopped notching the boards as he replaced the wood. That meant that the one end of our kitchen started to rise up... basically our floor was all wavy!! So we had to pull up the floor boards (they were tongue and groove believe it or not). Rob and my Dad leveled everything out and my Dad planed everything back to level. We have to level the kitchen were the fridge was previously too. Turns out the guy had a leak that he either didn't kow about or didn't do anything about. The floor boards rotted and sagged.... PHEW!!! such surprises!!

Rob and Dad cut a new hole in the hallway so that we can have access to the crawl space.

We bought some brand new floor boards on Sunday after church. They'll go down on top of our fresh and level floors. Then we'll put our actual floors down! Rob's Dad drove us to Home Depot in Pop Pops van and then helped Rob carry it into the house! What would we do without family?

 Today after I pulled out all the staples and nails in the kitchen and hallway I decided to tackle the ivy.... I didn't get very far... but the little bit that I pulled away revealed a tree stump and another rock.... This could be a long process!

Rob and I got a quote from Home Depot for our carpet and want to have that installed before we move into our house at the end of the month! We have so much to do before then! SOme things on our list for this week and the weekend are: pulling the carpet up throughout the house. There is some of that same flooring in the den with the fireplace that we'll need to cut up and take out (just when I thought that part was over). Dad is going to lay the new floor boards and then teach Rob and I how to dry-wall the hallway. We're hoping to paint the downstairs hall and hopefully lay our new hardwood down. Dad also needs to move that vent in the kitchen and get the plumbing ready for our new appliances! Our kitchen cabinets are set to arrive on the 27th and our appliances we'll be here on the 30th!!

Thanks for checking in again! Hopefully I'll do better with posting updates this week!

Love The Colby's!